Coffee with new atheists: A laptop, a publisher, and an ego the size of a … and out comes a Bible!

Why, given their obtuse and ostentatious hostility towards organised religion and spiritual hoo-ha, are the so-called New Atheists so keen to refashion the Bible? What’s with all these secularist versions of ‘the good book’, minus the original’s miracles and resurrections and instead offering us guides to life firmly rooted in scientific fact and what poses as rationalism? This bible bonanza tells us a lot about the New Atheists. About their arrogance, their ignorance about where moral meaning comes from, and, most fundamentally, their allergy to, their utter estrangement from, the idea of transcendence.The first question that any remotely inquisitive person will surely ask about these ‘new bibles’ is this: how massive must your head be, how unanchored your ego, to imagine that, in the space of a few months, ensconced in your office, you can rewrite the Bible? AC Grayling admits that his decision to publish a secular version of the Bible, titled The Good Book, might appear ‘tremendously hubristic’ but, he says, he intends it ‘in the spirit of great humility’.
– “This Easter, try to avoid the Gospel of Grayling”, Spiked

(21 April 2011)

11 Responses to Coffee with new atheists: A laptop, a publisher, and an ego the size of a … and out comes a Bible!

The universe, and life within it, are not just conglomerations of mechanisms. The universe, and life within it, have come into being by the nature of energy-mass dualism, and their fate, their final outcome, is governed by this dualism. The genesis and, most probable cyclic, existence of the universe are governed by the energy-mass relationship.

Energy-mass relationship governs also the routes, the mechanisms, of cosmic and life evolutions.

Mechanisms do not set/determine the classical physics fate states. Mechanisms are routes of evolution between classical physics fate states. Quantum mechanics are mechanisms, probable, possible and actual mechanisms of getting from one to other classical physics states WITHIN the expanse from cosmic singularity to the maximum expanded universe and back to singularity states.

The universe is the archetype of quantum within classical physics. This is the fractal oneness of the universe. Astronomically there are two physics. A classical Newtonian physics behaviour of and between galactic clusters, and a quantum physics behaviour WITHIN the galactic clusters.

Life’s Evolution Is The Quantum Mechanics Of Biology.
UNRAVEL COMPLEXITIES OF GENETICS. Extend Evolution/Natural Selection Backward To Genes/Genomes.
BOTH ARE ORGANISMS.

The origin-reason and the purpose-fate of life are mechanistic, ethically and practically valueless. Life is the cheapest commodity on Earth.

It is up to humans themselves to elect the purpose and format of their life as individuals and as group-members.

1. Dark energy and matter YOK. Per E=Total[m(1 + D)] all the energy and matter of the universe are accounted for.
Adopt space-massdistance concept, mass-to-energy reconversion.

2. Higgs Particle YOK. Mass forms below some value of the above D.

3. Galactic clusters formed by conglomeration?
Galactic clusters formed by Big-Bang’s dispersion, evidenced by their Newtonian behaviour including expansion acceleration.

4. The universe expansion is fueled by the mass-to-enrgy reconversion. Eventually, as expansion will slow down, will run out of massfuel, gravity will overcome expansion and initiate empansion back to singularity. The universe is a cyclic array of energy-mass dualism, between all-energy and all-mass poles, under omnipresent gravity.

5. Natural Selection is a trait of organisms, life?
No. Natural selection is ubiquitous for ALL mass formats, all spin arrays. It derives from the expansion of the universe. All mass formats, regardless of size and type, from black holes to smallest particles, strive to increase their constrained energy in attempt to postpone their own reconversion to energy, to the energy that fuels cosmic expansion.

6. Life is an enigma?
Life is just another type of mass array, a self-replicating mass array. Earth life is a replicating RNAs mass. It has always been and still is an RNA world. ALL Earth’s organisms are evolved RNAs, evolved for maintaining-enhancing Earth’s biosphere, for prolonging RNAs survival.

7. Cells are Earth-life’s primal organisms?
NO. Earth’s life day one was the day on which RNA began replicating. RNAs, genes, are ORGANISMS. And so are their evolved templates, (RNA and DNA) genomes, ORGANISMS, as evidenced by life’s chirality and by life’s sleep.

8. Circadian Schmircadian sleep origin?
Sleep is inherent for life via the RNAs, the primal Earth ORGANISMS originated and originally active only under direct sunlight, in their pre-metabolism genesis era.

9. Epigenetics are heritable gene functions changes not involving changes in DNA sequence?
The “heritable or enduring changes” are epiDNAtics, not epigenetics. Alternative splicing is not epigenetics, even if/when not involving alteration of the DNA sequence. Earth life is an RNA world.

10.Genetics drive biology and culture modifications?
NO. It is culture that modifies genetics, not genetics that modifies culture. Culture modifies genetics simply via the evolutionary natural selection process of the RNA ORGANISMS. Likewise many natural genetic changes are due to aging and/or circumstantial effects on the genes and/or genomes ORGANISMS, similar to aging and/or evolutionary processes in monocell communities or in multicelled organisms.

SCIENCE SHOULD UNFREEZE. SCIENCE SHOULD ADJUST ITS VISION, COMPREHENSION AND CONCEPTS.

Looks like the new atheists simply do not know where to stop. They really demonstrate the attitudes long since identified, assessed and rebuked here.

A better alternative, free for a download [not US$ 35 list], and chock full of time tested resources. (If you want to look at the question of warrant at a 101 level for Christian belief and the wider Judaeo-Christian theistic worldview in the ideological, new atheist darwinist era, cf here and here.)

A.
Purines and pyrimidines are two of the building blocks of nucleic acids. Only two purines and three pyrimidines occur widely in nucleic acids.

B.
Pyrimidine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound similar to benzene and pyridine, containing two nitrogen atoms at positions 1 and 3 of the six-member ring.

A purine is a heterocyclic aromatic organic compound, consisting of a pyrimidine ring fused to an imidazole ring. Purines, including substituted purines and their tautomers, are the most widely distributed kind of nitrogen-containing heterocycle in nature.

Aromaticity ( Kekule, Loschmidt, Thiele) is essential also for the Krebs Cycle, for energy production.

Natural selection is a universal ubiquitous trait of ALL mass spin formats, inanimate and animate.
Life began/evolved on Earth with the natural selection of inanimate RNA, then of some RNA nucleotides, then arriving at the ultimate mode of natural selection – self replication of RNAs. ALL Earth life is evolved RNAs. The drive and purpose of EarthLife is to enhance RNAs replication, its natural selection.

Aromaticity enables good constraining of energy and good propensity to hydrogen bonding. The address of EarthLife Genesis, of phasing from inanimate to animate natural selection, is Aromaticity. Hydrogen Bonding.

Pavlov demonstrated effecting placebo phenomena in multi celled organisms by manipulation of their drives-reactions. Now placebo and imagination phenomena are demonstrated also in Earth’s smallest, base organisms, in the genes and genomes of multi-celled organisms, in our primal 1st stratum and 2nd stratum base organisms.
A very good reason to smile.
Now an interesting chain is exposed to our view, the Genes-Virtual Reality Chain, a most intriguing cultural evolution chain extending from the genesis of our genes to nowadays, throughout life, a virtual reality existence, and by virtual reality phenomena, exploitations and manipulations.